Friday, August 08, 2008

I suppose in France it's culinary heresy to be consuming frozen vegetables in the middle of summer. But life doesn't always allow time to go sashaying off to the nearest picturesque outdoor marché, perfect French panier at the elbow, whiling away the morning squeezing the tomatoes and sniffing the melons for the day's perfect repast.

So sue me, I eat frozen. Sometimes.

Anyway, Popeye has no leg-up on me in terms of loving spinach. But in the states I always despised cooking chopped spinach from those clunky four-by-six-inch frozen blocks. It thaws, you turn it, it thaws, you turn it. Until it gets reduced to a slimy soap-bar-shaped green thing in the bottom of the pan with semi-cooked spinach around it.

What a surprise and relief to discover in France -- ta-da! -- frozen spinach briquettes. Every time I pour them into the pan, I have to supress the urge to haul out the hibachi. No kidding, they're shaped exactly like these.

5 comments:

Aren't you clever for finding these...but what are they? Are they flat briquettes that thaw more easily? Or are they leaves? I can't quite tell, but I am happy that you like them.

I had an occasion to ramble through the frozen section of our grocery store here in Boulder recently, ahem, and noticed that the fare was NOTHING like what I used to see at Picard or even the Champion for that matter. Much more pedestrian fare here.

Well, we cook with what we have, don't we? I'll bet that spinach was good...and so good for you!

I've got a lot of catching up to do as I've been more or less offline for the last month. So much to read and so little time!

Hope all goes well...I just stopped at the first post, now I must forge on.